LOS ANGELES, April 18 (UPI) -- Lea Myren says she researched pain on the internet to prepare for her role in The Ugly Stepsister, in theaters Friday. The Norwegian film tells the Cinderella fairy tale from the perspective of the stepsister, normally portrayed as a cruel rival of Cinderella's.
In this version, Elvira (Myren) becomes stepsister to Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess) after her mother marries Agnes' father. Elvira's mother is widowed shortly after the wedding, however, leading her to prepare Elvira to win the Prince's (Isac Calmroth) affections at a ball. In a gruesome twist, this involves subjecting Elvira to dental, nasal and ocular surgery with no anesthesia.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Myren said she wanted to make sure she portrayed Elvira's pain accurately.
"I just Googled what happens to the body," Myren said. "The reaction that your body often gets when you experience that amount of pain is that you freeze. Your body actually just shuts off and tenses."
Myren said her training at the Jacque Lecoq theater school in Paris, which focuses on physicality and movement, paid off in this physical role. She also credited writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt with advising her on how to portray a person freezing up in pain.
Blichfeldt said she has experienced similar pain when she dislocated her knees.
"I know a thing or two about pain," the director added.
Fortunately, Myren survived filming The Ugly Stepsister with no lasting scars, thanks to movie magic. For her, the challenge was to maintain her portrayal of pain as she waited for makeup and prosthetics to create the illusion that she is being mutilated.
"Of course, I had to scream a lot," Myren said. "We have little time, there's a lot of prosthetics, there's a lot of lights that have to be correct. That is quite hard, and also keep the emotional aspect of it."
Blichfeldt said she wanted to make a new version of Cinderella without losing the original story. In the Brothers Grimm version of the tale, she sympathized with the stepsister.
"I found this very relatable character fairy tale that's been there all along," Blichfeldt said.
Blichfeldt also hopes her take on Cinderella makes viewers think about their perceptions of beauty and the expectations they have of women.
"Women have been objects owned by men for thousands and thousands of years," Blichfeldt said. "The only way we've had power is through being the perfect object."
She pointed out that after a century of women's independence, they have not escaped the expectation of perfection. Blichfeldt also said, however, that she has no judgment toward modern women who choose to get cosmetic surgery, with anesthesia.
"We're all victims of the society that we grew up in," Blichfeldt said. "All we can do is try to do better than the people before us."
Blichfeldt graduated from the Norwegian National Film School for directing in 2018. The Ugly Stepsister is her first feature after making short films.
Loch Naess grew up as a child actor in Norwegian film and television and went to a drama high school. She appreciated how Blichfeldt shifted the perspective to question assumptions the original story made.
Many generations have grown up with the traditional Cinderella story, in which the heroine overcomes her evil stepmother and sisters to win the prince.
"Who controls the narrative?" Loch Naess asked. "Why is Elvira ugly? Why have we only been told this one narrative? Let's dismantle them all."
The most ubiquitous version of Cinderella was Walt Disney's 1950 animated version, which depicts Cinderella as the hard working servant to her unreasonable stepmother and dimwitted stepsisters.
By shifting the perspective to Elvira's point of view, Agnes becomes the Cinderella who sabotages Elvira's plan by showing up at the prince's ball. Loch Naess said the appeal of Blichfeldt's take was that it brought complexity to fairy tale heroines and villains.
"We all get to go from being two dimensional characters, the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly, to be real human beings," Loch Naess said.
All of the tortures Elvira endures come undone after the ball. In the end, her physical appearance lives up to the film's title.
"By the end, I've kind of made her into what many people would perceive as ugly," Blichfeldt said. "At the same time, that's when we love her the most."
Myren agreed and said she felt the most self-critical in the ball scene, when the results of her primping are on display.
"I felt the most bad with myself as Elvira at the ball actually," Myren said. "When she had done all this to herself is when I was most insecure as an actress as well."
Myren hopes The Ugly Stepsister is a cautionary tale for viewers about the dangers of giving up one's individuality.
"I think in the beginning is when she was most free," Myren said. "She had all these dreams and she just wants to be loved, which we all really crave for. We want to be loved as who we are and I think everyone can relate to that."
